Going South:
How Safe Funds
Overstretched

The troubles facing a Florida state-run investment pool, which faced what looked like an old-fashioned bank-run last week, are a reminder of the age-old trade-off between risk and return.

As the mortgage investment crisis has rippled through Wall Street, high-paid hedge funds and deep-pocketed banks seemed most prone to taking on too much risk in exchange for a little extra return. Now it's clear that even some money-market funds --...